Videographic and GPS techniques for monitoring active glacial surge: Bering Glacier, Alaska

• Main Author: Thatcher, P. Anthony
• Other Authors: Rosenfeld, Charles L., Geosciences
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English; unknown
• Published: Oregon State University
• Subjects: glacier; Alaska
• Online Access: https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_projects/3484zh736

Aerial videography in combination with GPS were used to monitor the active surge of Alaska's Bering Glacier. The large aerial extent of the study area and the unpredictable weather in coastal Alaska required innovative techniques to be used in order to successfully monitor the surge environment. A portable aerial videographic system which mounts in a variety of small aircraft was developed to allow detailed mapping of the glacier's terminus under a variety of conditions. This system is georeferenced with GPS tracking of the aircraft, as well as GPS ground truthing and rectification of imagery and mapping products. This allowed precise mapping in a region with no established survey network. Video imagery is encoded with GPS time to allow precise location of individual frames of video imagery allowing mapping accuracies of approximately 20 meters. Long distance differential correction of the GPS data improved the accuracies to close to 10 meters. Additional work with time-lapse videography allowed detailed analysis of small sections of the terminus to be studied over longer time periods.